Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson have visited St Mary’s Church Hall in Goldington to see first-hand how Bedford’s “trailblazer” Family Hubs are supporting local families.
MP for Bedford and Kempston, Mohammad Yasin (Labour), welcomed them to one of the borough’s new pop-up Family Hubs, which aim to make family support easier to find, more joined up and closer to home.
Bedford Borough is one of 75 “trailblazer” areas nationally for the Government’s Family Hubs and Start for Life programme and is receiving £1.168 million as part of a £126 million national investment in family services.
The programme focuses on giving children the best possible start in life by bringing key services together in welcoming, community-based hubs.
The borough now has seven permanent Family Hubs and four pop-up hubs in community venues, including St Mary’s Church Hall in Goldington, helping ensure families across Bedford, including rural and growing communities, know where to go for support.
Family Hubs are designed as local one-stop shops where families can access practical, everyday support from pregnancy through childhood and adolescence.
Services range from health visiting and infant feeding advice to mental health support, parenting programmes and early learning guidance. The aim is to avoid families having to chase different services or repeat their story to get the help they need.
Two-child benefit cap
The PM and Education Secretary were in Bedford to announce legislation to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer described it as a “pivotal moment” in the fight against child poverty. In Bedfordshire, the change is estimated to benefit around 5,240 households, or roughly 19,000 children.
Ministers say the policy is central to the government’s child poverty strategy, arguing that removing the cap will help tackle the long-term impact poverty has on children’s education, job prospects and future earnings.
Seven in ten children growing up in poverty are from working families, and the government says wider support – including better local services, more help with childcare and cutting the cost of essentials such as infant formula – is needed alongside the change.
The move builds on measures already in place across Bedfordshire, including free breakfast clubs in 15 schools, an expanded network of 12 Best Start Family Hubs, and 30 hours of funded childcare for more than 7,400 working families.
Nearly £2.5 million has also been provided for the Holiday Activities and Food Programme, and new or expanded school-site nurseries.
This includes the first funded school-based nursery in Bedford Borough at Westfield Primary School, which is designed to give children a smoother start to their education.
While the Prime Minister has hailed the change as a “pivotal moment”, local Conservative MPs have taken a very different view.
Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Blake Stephenson, said it removes “an important safeguard in our welfare system”.
“Removing the two-child benefit cap is not a cost-free act of compassion; it is a sign of a Prime Minister capitulating to his backbench MPs to save his own skin, instead of getting spending under control and securing Britain’s future.
“At a time when families are already squeezed by high taxes and rising living costs, the Government is requiring those who work hard and play by the rules to pick up an already bloated welfare bill which is spiralling out of control.
“I will always stand up for those in Mid Bedfordshire who genuinely need support, but the best way out of poverty is work.
“The two-child limit is an important safeguard in our welfare system, striking a balance between providing support and ensuring fairness for working families who do not see their incomes grow as their families grow.”
Party over people?
His North Bedfordshire Conservative colleague, Richard Fuller MP, struck a similar tone, suggesting the move was more about party management than helping families.
“Rather than a thought-through economic plan, the Prime Minister and his Chancellor made a reckless, last-minute U-turn to scrap the two-child benefit cap in order to placate their rebelling backbenchers.
“They put party before country and, in doing so, jeopardised long-term economic stability for Bedfordshire and the country.
“With 28 million people currently working to support 28 million others, the nation’s welfare bill is unsustainable and removing the cap only deepens that imbalance.
“The Prime Minister and his Chancellor have saddled taxpayers with a £3.5 billion annual bill for their impulsive decision and imposed substantial tax rises on working families.
“Just as working parents don’t receive a pay rise for having children, it is reasonable to expect parents receiving benefits to make the same choices about having children.
“The Prime Minister says this policy will help families, but if he was serious about this, he would focus on creating jobs and supporting growth – not stifling the very businesses that provide them.
“The single most effective route out of poverty is work, and work can only thrive in an economy that is growing. When the Government hits small businesses in Bedfordshire with sky-high taxes, it makes it harder for them to hire and stay afloat.
“That results in fewer jobs, slower growth, and families struggling to get by.”
“A trusted place”
At the heart of the approach is the Start for Life offer, focusing on the first 1,001 days of a child’s life, from conception to age two.
This period is seen as critical for a child’s physical health, emotional wellbeing and long-term development, with early, preventative and joined-up support helping children start school ready to learn and reducing pressure on health and specialist services later.
Speaking during the visit, Mohammad Yasin said that many parents still struggled to navigate support.
He said: “Family life can be joyful, exhausting and complicated all at once. Too many parents tell me that when they need help, it can feel hard to know where to turn.
“Family Hubs are changing that by bringing support together in one trusted place, right in the heart of our communities.
“I am proud that Bedford is a trailblazer area for this programme. This £1.1 million investment is already making a real difference for local families, helping parents feel supported and giving children the best possible start in life.
“Family Hubs in Bedford are open to everyone, expectant parents, families with children from birth to 19, or up to 25 for those with special educational needs or disabilities, offering friendly, practical support when it’s needed most.”
Cost of living
Speaking to invited media at the event, the Prime Minister was asked whether scrapping the two-child benefit cap was enough on its own and whether more should be done to reduce wider cost-of-living pressures.
He said the government was “focusing on the cost of living” and pointed to existing measures alongside the removal of the cap.
He said: “Firstly, you’re absolutely right that we’re focussing on the cost of living, and that is because I know that families, here and across the country, the cost of living is the single most important issue, and that’s why we’ve been emphasising the fact that £150 has come off energy bills in April for every household.
“With frozen rail fares, which, for those on season tickets in particular, will make a huge amount of difference, prescription charges are frozen, again, for the second year running.
“Today, we’re rolling out the legislation to get rid of the two-child limit, making a massive difference to families in this hub.”
Local Authority support
The Prime Minister was also asked whether more central government funding was needed to support financially stretched local authorities, such as Bedford, and help limit council tax rises.
“The question of whether council tax goes up or down is a question for councils themselves,” he said.
“At central government, what we’re doing is putting in record amounts of money to those councils, and obviously making up for lost ground, because they’ve been underfunded for years under the last government.
“We’re also making sure that it’s more flexible. Many councils have said, can we have the settlement over a longer period of time? Because if we only get year on year on year, we can’t spend the money as well as we might otherwise do. So we’ve changed that as well.
“I’m not pretending there aren’t challenges for councillors, of course. But I am saying the government has listened, we’ve put in that record amount of funding. We’ve changed the structure of the funding, and I think that will begin to make a difference.
“And the decision on actual council tax rises is a matter for the councils themselves. The action that we’re taking to back families, both here in Bedford and across the country, is going to make a huge difference.
“Whether that’s new free breakfast clubs, expanding free school meals, or the big expansion in childcare.
“But also the action we’re taking on child poverty. That will lift tens of thousands of children here out of poverty, but also more than half a million children across the country, and that is the difference that a Labour government is delivering.”
Breakfast club criticism
The Bedford Independent also asked Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson whether free breakfast clubs were properly funded and flexible enough to support families, after complaints that the cost of living was affecting the food they could provide and that more flexible options could help those on shift work.
She said the government had already launched hundreds of clubs and was using early rollout to refine the funding model.
She said: “We’ve launched 750 free breakfast clubs already. That’s an early adopter phase, so that’s been our chance to work with schools to test what works and to make sure that, ahead of full national rollout, we get the funding model right.
“We are making some changes, ahead of the national rollout, because we’ve heard that it needs to be done in a slightly different way. We are putting extra investment in.
“What I’ve heard from families is that free breakfast clubs make a huge difference at the start of the day. The chance to drop off your children,so they can settle in, but also parents are able to get to work. But this also goes hand in hand with the big expansion of childcare.
“Also, the expansion of free school meals, lots of practical steps that are going to make a big difference to families.
“We know that the cost of living pressures are still really acute for lots of families, and that’s the action that we’re taking, both around schools, but also beyond – prescription charges, on rail fares – all of that action is designed to put more money back in people’s pockets.”
